NCSE News / General Topics

The eminent biophysicist Harold Morowitz died on March 22, 2016, at the age of 88. Morowitz, according to the obituary in The New York Times (April 1, 2016), "was best known for applying thermodynamic theory to biology, exploring how 'the energy that flows through a system acts to organize that system.'"

Writing on AL.com (March 31, 2016), Amanda Glaze denounced the recent decision of the Alabama state board of education to retain the "scientifically inaccurate and pedagogically inappropriate" evolution disclaimer affixed to biology textbooks in the state's public schools.

At its March 10, 2016, meeting, the Alabama state board of education voted to retain a disclaimer about evolution mandated for the state's textbooks, even though the new Alabama science standards describe evolution as "substantiated with much direct and indirect evidence."

Antonin Scalia, a justice on the United States Supreme Court, died on February 13, 2016, at the age of 79, according to the obituary in The New York Times (February 14, 2016). Appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Scalia served on the court from 1986 until his death. The Times wrote of the controversial Scalia that his "transformative legal theories, vivid writing and outsize personality made him a leader of a conservative intellectual renaissance in his three decades on the Supreme Court."

Scientists and science educators of all stripes — students, postdocs, faculty, and full- or part-time science communicators — are invited to enter the Sixth Annual Evolution Video Competition, sponsored by the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the BEACON Center for